Whisky punch

“ The odious exciseman, with his portentous book in one hand, his unrelenting pen held in the other, or stuck beneath his hat-band, and the ink-bottle (‘black emblem of the informer’) dangling from his waist-coat-button—went not then from ale-house to ale-house, denouncing all those patriotic dealers in spirit, who preferred selling whisky, which had nothing to do with English laws (but to elude them,) to retailing that poisonous liquor, which derived its name from the British “parliament,” that compelled its circulation among a reluctant people. ”

“ Every unknown face necessarily meant danger, each stranger was a person to be looked on with suspicion till proved harmless. Even the friends and well-wishers of the illicit distiller did not always act in the way most conducive to his comfort and well-being, for if his still turned out a whisky that was extra seductive, he speedily became so popular, so run after, and the list of his acquaintances so extended, that sooner or later tidings of his whereabouts leaked round to the ears of the gaugers, and arrest, or a hasty midnight flitting, was the outcome. ”

“ I expected naething but melted brimstone, said to be the staple drink o' your dominions. But is it really whisky? It's surely impossible—if the circumstance got wind aboon, that there was whisky in these parts, there wad be nae keepin folk out. How dinna ye spread the intelligence? Surely ye're no sae keen for recruits as ye were when ye danced awa wi' the exciseman."
"It is already known on earth that whisky was first brewed in Pandemonium," said the actor. "The nectar belongs to heaven, the wine to earth, and the whisky to the infernal regions. ”

“ Alcohol, of course, is good for poison ivy, but whisky is better. Maybe it is because of the drugs that wicked men are said to put into it. Besides, whisky has other uses. The guides told us of one perfectly rigid person who, when he had discovered that whisky was being included in his camp supplies, had become properly incensed, and commanded that it be left at home. The guides had pleaded that he need not drink any of it, that they would attend to that part of what seemed to them a necessary camp duty, but he was petrified in his morals, and the whisky remained behind. ”

“ CHRISTMAS "CRACKERS."
Plum-pudding never disagrees with me, however much I take of it. No more do mince-pies, no matter how many I eat. Steaming hot-and-strong gin-punch is the most wholesome beverage; so, also, is brandy-punch. It can't harm anybody who, on the Pickwickian principle, "takes enough of it." Both beverages go admirably with cigars and pipes. If you have anything like a headache on Boxing-day morning, depend upon it, it comes from abstemiousness in drinking, eating, and smoking. ”

“ To attempt offering one would only mislead. A certain inspiration must animate the artist. It has been asserted that no two persons make this drink alike. This remark is admirable, and might probably be applied not only to punch, but to every drink that has yet been composed.
It has been said that of punches there are at least threescore. Here follow a few of the many varieties: Brandy, Sherry, Gin, Whiskey, Port, Sauterne, Claret, Missisippi, Vanilla, Pine Apple, Orgeat, Curaçoa, Roman, Glasgow, Milk, and Regent’s, brewed by George IV. ”

“ You may know one of these unhappy beings, especially if he be a very young man, by the sullen and dogged air with which, early in the morning, he enters the public house, and sits down in solitude and silence to his double-shotted measure of undiluted whisky—whisky is the only drink for one of this calibre—alas! the worst and fiercest stuff that can be made is the most acceptable to him—his palate is too long palled to distinguish between tastes and flavours—it is the liquid fire he wants ”

“ A Chinese weight equal to one pound and a third.
'This excessive use of whisky has impoverished many families, and has demoralised many men. It has caused many quarrels, and given rise to many lawsuits. The evil caused by whisky is apparent to all, but custom requires that friends should be honoured by being offered whisky, business should be transacted over whisky, and the general saying is that without whisky nothing can be done. A farmer, for example, adding a few rooms to his buildings must supply his masons and joiners with whisky. ”

“ In the hall at last, he glared about him frenziedly, saw the open door of the dining-room, hurried in, turned to the whisky decanter on the sideboard, seized it, and, putting it to his mouth, gulped down the raw spirit as if it were water. Pausing at last, he gave a long shuddering sigh, stood swaying a few moments; then, raising his hand as if to send the poison crashing into the grate, recollected himself, and, placing the little bottle gingerly on the sideboard, turned, ran to the front door, and, opening it, tore from the house on his way to the police-station. ”

“ Samson remarked, as he felt a piece of cloth.
"I hate it," Abe went on. "It don't seem respectable any longer."
"Back in Vermont we don't like the whisky business."
"You're right, it breeds deviltry and disorder. In my youth I was surrounded by whisky. Everybody drank it. A bottle or a jug of liquor was thought to be as legitimate a piece of merchandise as a pound of tea or a yard of calico. That's the way I've always thought of it. But lately I've begun to get the Yankee notion about whisky. When it gets into bad company it can raise the devil." ”

“ If a man wants to drink at any time, what right have I to say he shall not?”
“But the poor man goes and makes a beast of himself,” said Watts.
“There is as much champagne drunkenness as whisky drunkenness, in proportion to the number of drinkers of each. But a man who drinks champagne, is sent home in a cab, and is put to bed, while the man who can’t afford that kind of drink, and is made mad by poisoned and doctored whisky, doctored and poisoned because of our heavy tax on it, must take his chance of arrest. That is the shameful thing about all our so-called temperance legislation. ”

“ It had brought him nothing but old age, solitude, disappointment, and, to-night especially, a sense of fatigue and apathy that weighed upon him like a suffocating blanket. On a table, a yard or two away, stood a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water bottles and tumblers; he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew that there was what he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him, revive him, and make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress and go to bed. But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the whisky out, he shrank from that effort as from an Herculean labour ”

“ Outnumbered ten to one, their voices rang out in shrill banter and delirious laughter above the rumble of men. At the far end, a fiddle, a piano, and a clarinet were squealing forth music. The place smelled strongly of whisky. It always smelled of that, for most of the men who sought amusement here got their whisky in spite of the law. There were rock-hogs from up the line, and rock-hogs from down the line, men of all nationalities and of almost all ages; teamsters, trail-cutters, packers, and rough-shod navvies; men whose daily task was to play with dynamite and giant powder ”

“ We are tolerably loyal in this our time; still it is problematical if there exist man or woman in Merry England, in our day who would whisk a mixture for sixty minutes by the clock, even with the prospect of drinking to the reigning monarch.
Brandy Sour.
This is simplicity itself. A teaspoonful of sifted sugar in a small tumbler, a little lemon rind and juice, one wine-glassful of brandy. Fill nearly up with crushed ice, shake and strain. Whisky Sour is merely Scotch whisky treated in the same kind, open-handed manner, with the addition of a few drops of raspberry syrup. ”

“ Now, there is an old saying, DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM, and consequently every person has a perfect right to like what pleases him; so that in this way anyone may prefer to drink whisky, or any other form of spirits, and he is quite entitled to believe there is nothing so good for him; but, on the other hand, an habitual spirit-drinker must not claim to possess a correct judgment in estimating the qualities of a good wine; for, as a matter of fact, the daily influence of whisky on the palate is absolutely fatal to its delicacy of perception. ”

“ The newspapers frequently contain items regarding the death of children who have had access to whisky, and drunk freely of it. Cases are reported, too, of men, habituated to drink, who after tossing off several glasses of brandy at the bar of a saloon have suddenly dropped dead. ”

“ It is needless to enter into any detail of the history of these fluids. Brandy kills soonest; it takes most rapidly to the head, and, more readily than the others, tinges the face to a crimson or livid hue. Rum is probably the next in point of fatality; and, after that, whisky and gin. ”

“ To one pint of whisky and two glasses of brandy add the juice and peel of one lemon and a wine-glassful of boiling ale; well stir into it half a pound of powdered sugar, and add a quart of boiling water. This is said to be the most fascinating tipple ever invented; and, to quote the words of Basil Hall, "It brightens a man's hopes, crumbles down his difficulties, softens the hostility of his enemies, and, in fact, induces him for the time being to think generously of all mankind, at the tiptop of which it naturally and good-naturedly places his own dear self." ”

“ I never knew whisky to do the men any good. It was certainly one of the strangest of follies to issue whisky rations, as was sometimes done on occasions of peculiar exposure. The men who never tasted stimulants had the most endurance, and suffered the least from cold or exposure of any kind. We wonder at the delusions of witchcraft, and can scarcely comprehend how men could so abandon common sense as to give credence to such folly; but the absurdity of the use of alcoholic stimulants is not less puerile. ”

“ Beginning in Maine, where the most ingenious methods of whipping the devil around the stump are adopted, then going through northern Iowa and tasting her exhilarating pop, and at last paying ten cents to see the blind pig at Minnehaha, I feel like one who has wrestled with the temperance problem in a practical way, and I have about decided that a high license is about the only way to make the sale of whisky odious. Prohibition is too abrupt in its methods, and one generation can hardly wipe out the appetite for liquor that has been planted and fostered by fifty preceding generations. ”

“ Truly a homœopathic dose of genuine brandy! And even that [167] whisky when it left Wisconsin was only half whisky; for there are men in the whisky-making States who make it a business to take whisky direct from the distillery, add to it an equal quantity of water, and then bring it up to a bead and the power of intoxication, by mixing in a variety of the villainous drugs and deadly poisons enumerated in this chapter. The annual loss of strength, health, and life caused by the adulteration of liquor is truly appalling. ”

“ To the extent that whisky is used as a beverage it is hurtful in its influence upon the individual and upon society at large. It is the cause of innumerable crimes, of poverty and distress in the family and home. Still, it is an appetite that will be gratified, however severe may be the laws against its use, and while this habit exists the tax upon whisky, by limiting the quantity consumed, is beneficial to society at large. It is true that alcohol, the base of whisky, is useful in the arts and in the preparation of medicines and vinegar. ”

“ I consider it infinitely worse than any ever manufactured out of tobacco-juice, Cayenne pepper, and whale-oil at Port Townsend, Washington Territory, where the next worst whisky in the world is used as the common beverage of the inhabitants. ”

“ Yes'm, he am that fer a fact, and they can't no low-down whisky bum beat him fer jedge, neither—'specially ef they count on using niggers to do it with. You see the race am so mighty close, that all the booze bosses is a telling the niggers that they is got the 'ballunce uf power' as they calls it and it's up ter them ter elect a jedge fer whisky, the friend 'at'll let 'em drink it down. ”

“ When a bowl of tea (there were no cups) was lifted out a similar amount of water was put in to replace it and a three fingerful of tea was added. The man of the house, a stout little fellow with a red nose, took up his position behind the bar and sold whisky with lightning rapidity. Now and again he gave a glass of whisky free of cost to some of the harvesters who weren’t drinking very heavily. Those who got free drinks usually bought several glasses of liquor afterwards and became the most drunken men in the house.
After a long sleep Micky’s Jim awoke and called for a bowl of tea. ”

“ This, too, opened the eyes of many to the brutalizing effects of drinking, and led them to declare that if that was what whisky brought men to, they would never drink another drop; and every such convert only strengthened the resolution and faith of those who by their sufferings were able to save some. ”

“ Ask what it [Pg 198] means, and you will be told it is such and such a distillery calling its hands to breakfast. Ask how many hands they have, and you may find that one establishment has some sixty or seventy men who eat their food! The whisky trade is simply enormous. It is out of all proportion to every other trade. The women as a rule do not drink, the men do all the drinking—the males I should say, for not a few boys acquire the habit of taking whisky to their meals long before they can be called men. A very few men do not use whisky at all. ”